


K, Like a Secret

by jazzfic



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-14
Updated: 2013-03-14
Packaged: 2017-12-04 13:52:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/711457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jazzfic/pseuds/jazzfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It wasn't that they were enemies. It wasn't that they were anything, really. She just didn't know how to be around him. To process the direction her thoughts had begun to take when he was there, growing up with her. And then, when he wasn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	K, Like a Secret

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PeetasAndHerondales](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PeetasAndHerondales/gifts).



> Gift for peetasandherondales for the Hunger Games Spring Fling. The prompt was: _Katniss is a southern country girl who runs into Peeta Mellark, a wealthy painter visiting the small town of Panem._ I hope my interpretation isn't too far off the mark! I really enjoyed participating in the exchange, especially as I was able to find my footing somewhat in what is still a newish fandom for me as far as writing goes. My thanks to Trippy41 for the beta.

“Jo?”

On a baking hot afternoon the insides of the small businesses that made up the main thoroughfare of the town of Panem were like cool, dark refuges from the bright sun outside. And at the end of a relatively quiet Friday, most if not all were also completely empty. Katniss poked her head in through the half-open door of one, surveying the room and its emptiness, her narrowed eyes searching out its owner and finding none. The bell above her head finished tinkling, and after a beat she realized that the cordless phone next to the small register was lit up and ringing sharply. So she stepped all the way in, placed the cardboard box she'd been carrying awkwardly onto a nearby bench, and picked it up.

“Mason's Tattoos.”

“ _Where is she?_ ”

“Haymitch.” Katniss rolled her eyes at the angry bark, pasting on a fake smile. “She's not here, sorry. I have literally just stepped through the door. She might be upstairs. D'you want me to—”

“ _Nah, I'll see her tonight anyways. It can wait._ ” 

She opened her mouth to reply, but heard the click and the dial tone. _And hello to you, too. Always the gentleman, Abernathy._ With a sigh Katniss wrapped both hands around the box and aimed for the narrow staircase leading up to the first floor. She took the steps quickly, knowing the way by feel and from having travelled up and down those old, carpeted steps near to a thousand times. At the archway leading into the small living room she stopped and said, “Hey Jo, there's an empty shop down there, or had you forgotten.”

Johanna Mason turned slowly from where she was standing by the fridge, and aimed a middle finger in her friend's direction. She finished draining a bottle of water and smacked her lips. Today they were a deep burgundy, the color perfectly offsetting the two layered tanks she had matched with a pair of skin-tight jeans. The combination made her whole body look about a mile long, a neat trick considering she was shorter than Katniss, who wasn't exactly tall herself. “Yeah, well,” she grunted. “What can I say? Business is booming.”

“Must be why you're so keen to answer your phone then,” said Katniss over the edge of her box.

Johanna waved a hand. “I know it was Haymitch. Old roughnut can wait.” She tilted her head slightly. “Now, you care to explain why I'm talkin' to a box there, sweetpea?”

The endearment was laced with the familiar Mason sarcasm; any conversation with Johanna, Katniss found, was usually peppered with at least a half dozen thinly veiled insults. How they often avoided niceties, like saying hello. And the fact that neither really cared. To an outsider their friendship might seem an odd one, but really, there were few in Katniss's life that weren't. She set the box down on the chipped kitchen bench with a soft thud. “Here,” she said. “You were after old magazines, right? These are the ones I managed to drag intact from Prim's crazy hoard. Poor girl keeps these things for years, it's real touching.”

Johanna fished out an old copy of _Seventeen_ and made an appreciative shape with her lips, flicking through the pages. “Intact's not gonna matter,” she murmured. “Not when I've finished with them.”

Panem might have been a small town very much like every other small town in the district, but somehow it seemed to attract every artistic type within a curiously vast radius. Why this was, Katniss didn't know, her own endeavours in the craft stretching about as far as a couple of stick figures and a particularly unmemorable ceramic bowl she'd been forced to make in one of Haymitch's after school classes. Unmemorable as in even the cat refused to drink out of it. But Johanna was as good a sculptor as she was a tattooist, and used the pulling power of her position as one of Katniss's few friends to rope her into helping with all sorts of projects. This current one seemed to involve a whole lot of magazines and newspapers and Johanna wandering about town with as much sticky gunk stuck to her elbows and hands as she did heavy mascara on her eyelashes. Art was art, though, and Panem being Panem, nobody really ever looked at her twice. 

“Great.” Katniss glanced without enthusiasm at the clock on the wall and edged towards the stairs. She had chores to do before Prim got home, and now she had let go of the box she could feel the tiredness seeping through her arms. “Look, Jo, I gotta go. I'll see you round, 'kay?” 

Johanna merely grunted, her eyes fixed on the pages, so Katniss made her way back to the studio floor. It was still dark and like a badly lit cave down there, but by now the shadows from the afternoon sun had lengthened enough to dampen the contrast. She glanced around at the mirrors, the posters scribbled over with figures and patterns and intricate lettering, all distinctive of her friend's very personal style. 

At the door she paused briefly, flipping the sign to _Closed_ , and let the sound of the bell wash over her as she stepped outside.

 

–

 

Ask anyone where Haymitch Abernathy lived and they would point towards a small, two storey house, stuck smack bang in the middle of a flat and weathered field on the very edges of town. It had been a family farm once, generations back, but was now home to the peculiar lone figure of Haymitch, the recently retired high school art teacher, whose main occupation nowadays was a semi-permanent state of inebriation and richly stark outlook upon life. 

As disagreeable as he was, though, it was impossible to completely cast him aside. The amount of sheer effort and perseverance he had put into his work came to a hefty score; his mentoring of any young kid with an ounce of artistic talent was well known. And however hard anyone tried to dislike him, the respect he garnered always somehow won out. 

The road leading past his house was straight as an arrow's path, sealed but liberally potholed, overgrown with creeping weeds along the sides where the grass was scorched dry from the sun. A soft breeze ran past Katniss as she walked along it, half on the road and half on the verge. Her hands were shoved deep into the pockets of her worn hoodie and her head was down as she watched the foreshortened shadows her feet made with each step. Music piped through one ear bud, the other she left hanging over her shoulder so she could listen out for traffic. Not that there was much chance of any moving object other than herself at this time of day. She usually took the shorter route home, but after leaving Johanna she had decided to go around the western end of town, along past the river. Her thin excuse for leaving had been only partly true—yes, there were chores to do, but there were always chores. There was always work and grind in a large, rattling house lived in by two sisters aged just eighteen and fourteen, and abandoned by any parental figure but what they made on their own. Truth was she had felt the pull of the outdoors and needed the walk. Not to think, not to obsess over the slight emptiness she always somehow felt around anyone but Prim, or to wonder absently if their budget would stretch this week to a tub of strawberry ice-cream, or more carrots for their goat, Lady. Just to walk, and exist with herself in the quiet. 

It was easy to be solitary. Harder, Katniss knew, to explain why.

Maybe that was why she identified with Haymitch, as much as she rolled her eyes at him alongside Johanna, and as much as she held her tongue and tried not to completely bite off his head every time he said something that rubbed her the wrong way or exposed some raw inkling of truth. He did that a lot. And she gave back just as fiercely and just as well. 

She saw that she was getting close to his house, and slowed a little. It looked like nobody had lived there for months, but Katniss knew where to look. Her eyes dragged over the closed blinds and the porch cluttered with junk, and she made no judgement. Things were all threadbare and thinned out this part of the country; with few exceptions they were all as much alike in some sort of way. There was no doubt, however, that Haymitch's quarters were fugitively, if not literally, on the wrong side of the tracks. Well, wrong side of the river, maybe. 

Music switched off and hood shaken back, she passed by the front of the house and strode purposely towards the unlatched side gate, where a path led around to the enclosed yard out back. 

Katniss had meant to creep up on him, give him a hard time about his phone manner, but too late she heard voices, a snort of laughter that she knew at once did not belong to the old man, and before she could do anything her momentum had carried her with an awkward stumble into the yard, to come to a stop and be met by the eyes of one Peeta Mellark.

She stared, open mouthed. “Oh...shit.” 

Haymitch, who was lounging on a crooked looking deck chair and nursing a hip flask in one hand, chuckled softly.

“You get an eleven for _that_ entrance, sweetheart,” he said with a wink. “At least.”

But Katniss ignored him. She was gazing openly at the boy who had just gotten up from the other deck chair, and was now standing there as if he was suddenly unsure of what to do with his hands or feet. He was wearing a t-shirt that looked like it might have started out red, but had gone one too many times through the wash, and was now faded to a blotted melon color that didn't exactly do much to improve his already pale complexion. Dark jeans were bunched a little and rolled up unevenly where they met his sneakers. He looked back at her, not quite smiling, and she realized that he had spoken and was waiting for her to reply. 

“Shut up, Haymitch,” she hissed. Then, a little more gently, and because her mind had gone somewhat blank, she simply said, “Hi.”

This time the smile did break, lighting up his eyes and making them crinkle at the edges in a way that was so sudden and so familiar that she felt a tug at her chest. She wished he would sit. She wished she was anywhere but here.

“Katniss,” he said. 

“You're back,” she said dumbly.

Katniss didn't look at Haymitch through the long pause that followed, not once. But she could feel his gaze burning a hole through her, thick with amusement and laced with the sort of teasing truth she most despised him for. _You bastard_ , she thought. 

It was not until Peeta had sat back down, and Katniss had edged past them, putting her hand to the back door and muttering something about needing a glass of water, that it occurred to her that if she had to tell the truth, she honestly couldn't say which of them deserved the insult more.

 

– 

 

The story of Peeta Mellark was one the town of Panem would always have, to share and put up as if in a frame, to boast _look, look at our boy made good._ With hard work and dedication, a person can achieve a lot in two short years. Throw in quite ridiculous talent to that mix and you had Peeta, small town kid picked out from his peers at just sixteen by those who could spot something special, brought to the city on full arts scholarship, to make good so richly and so fast that he could pay it back five times over and more. Haymitch, the archetypal opposite if ever there was one, had always known the boy could paint, so was the last one to bat an eyelid when his young pupil had made his debut exhibition aged one month shy of seventeen. 

It was a fine story, and a real one. It just wasn't one Katniss had been any part of, until she started to wonder if she, just maybe, wanted to be. 

They had never been friends. They had never dated, or hung out. She had never pushed him off the swing or teased him into jumping off the rope bridge into the river. They had never fallen out, kissed, or made up. 

She had never thought of him when the long summers made it too hot to sleep, when she lay in the dark with Prim curled in the other side of their mother's bed, piecing together an innocent but hazy image of his body, things she hadn't yet seen and knew she probably never would, since he was now living a different life in a big, exciting city. Nor had she ever exhaled quietly while her fingers tensed into the lace of the pillowslip, the weight of what she was craving turning into sharply spoken words, her own voice and her own unsettled mind calling her ridiculous, poor, sorry ridiculous _girl._ Fourteen, sixteen, eighteen years old; her growing sense of awareness had made a mess of reality, so she spat it out by pulling on layers and playing parent to her sister, ally to a drunk she wanted to hate, and sour and reclusive to a friend who only wanted to tease. 

It wasn't that they were enemies. It wasn't that they were anything, really. She just didn't know how to be around him. To process the direction her thoughts had begun to take when he was there, growing up with her. And then, when he wasn't.

Katniss wasn't naive. She knew that she was sheltered, always had been. She was fierce, incredibly fierce about not caring what other girls her age were obsessed about. There was a strange comfort in that which she never could properly explain. But she was no machine. She would always wonder.

She stood in Haymitch's kitchen, holding a glass half-filled with water, watching through the wooden slats of the window. Peeta was sitting sideways on the chair, upper body tilted forward with his weight resting on his arms. His head was turned a little to the left; she could only see the back of Haymitch, who seemed mostly upright and awake— _for a change_ , she thought—and was gesturing animatedly while Peeta listened. Between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand was a piece of cotton that he was working away from the seam of his jeans, and each time he pulled at it the rubber bracelet that was wrapped round his wrist rode up and flashed neon green in the light. Occasionally he nodded or said something to Haymitch, but when he wasn't doing either of these she observed a muscle twitching at his jaw, the only point of tension in an otherwise relaxed face. She had seen the same thing in his painting, when he would bend over a piece of board or canvas, holding a loaded brush as if it were a short held breath; that fraction of a second before he let fly, before his face took on a look that spoke of a deeper concentration. It was a thing seared to her memory, as much of Peeta was. As much as she was prepared to admit he was, which wasn't anything at all. 

She swallowed and looked away, angling the glass so that the water trickled into the sink. Her mouth smacked of dryness. She ran her tongue over her lips and stepped outside.

“So,” she said, perching on an upturned crate. It looked like it had once held tinned tomatoes but had a distressed surface that appeared to be the result of some weird slashes and cuts, as if attacked by a wolverine. She didn't want to ask what Haymitch was using it for. “Is this, uh, just a visit?”

“Well, that's kinda up in the air.” Peeta shrugged, glancing at Haymitch. “It depends.”

“On what?”

He looked at her, opened his mouth, and closed it again. This was edging part awkward and was just getting weird now. Katniss folded her arms and felt a brief flash of deja-vu. It made her itchy, restless. She thought of Johanna and the box of magazines, and turned to Haymitch, hoping a change of subject might improve things, or at least take away the thudding in her chest. “What're you and Jo up to, Haymitch? I thought you guys were over collages. You said they made you wanna smash stuff.”

“Sweetheart, everything makes me wanna 'smash stuff'.” Haymitch sat up and waved a finger between Katniss and Peeta. “And don't go avoiding things like they're suddenly invisible.” He unfolded himself with a grunt and wandered towards the back door. “But thank you for the reminder. There's a hall of folks waiting to draw oranges and grapes and other shit artfully arranged in a fruit bowl, and apparently even though I'm retired...and I'm talking about the sort of retirement they throw parades for, even if it was jus' three guys in a bar throwing peanuts...I'm _still_ the only one who can teach this crap. God help us all.”

Katniss snorted, and caught Peeta doing the same. A little of the tension lifted from her shoulders. “Out of the goodness of your heart, I'm sure,” she said.

“Eh. Something like. Now clear out of my yard, would you? Visitin' hours are over.”

Haymitch disappeared inside, pulling the door closed with a thud. Peeta remained sitting, his gaze following the sound. Katniss immediately jumped up. “Hey, I gotta go, too. Prim'll be wondering where I am.” She spoke quickly, mumbling through her words in the way that used to infuriate her teachers all through school. The moment of regressive weakness left her flustered and she turned away. At the corner of the house she stopped and stared at him. It was almost a glare, but softened when she said, “You coming?”

He was up and at her side so quickly he almost tripped over his own feet. 

 

– 

 

For a time they walked without speaking. It was cooler now that the sun had edged past the line of trees, and unlike Katniss in her much-vaunted solitude this time there were two sets of feet making new shadows onto the road. But now it was one vague shape all blurred together, and to the naked eye was harder to pick out in the fading light. Peeta walked with his hands swinging free, Katniss with her eyes mostly on the road, and, when she was sure he couldn't see, sometimes on him. Her fingers twisted unseen in the arms of her hoodie. She had taken it off as they stood watching Haymitch drive his truck away in a cloud of dust, and it was now knotted around her waist. She tried to think of things to say that wouldn't lead to talk about money, because blunt as it was, that was the gulf that separated Peeta from Panem, and whether he was able to hide it, whether he even wanted to, was something she didn't actually want to hear, and was wholly certain he didn't want to talk about. So silence prevailed, and by degrees she felt herself relax, and perhaps it wasn't entirely awful. 

“You want to know the truth?”

She looked over quickly. His voice was so soft she wondered if he'd even spoken. 

“I miss this place. I told Miss Trinket I needed to come back, and she agreed, which kind of surprised me, 'cause I really thought I'd be in for an argument there, what with the new gallery opening in October. But she said she could just as easily take care of things from there, and I could work here, if I wanted. I had this big speech prepared and all that happened was she sighed and told me _go._ She's weird like that. You think you know someone...”

“Peeta,” she prompted. 

He blinked and met her eyes, a flush creeping across his nose. “Sorry. My mind, it...it gets off track. A lot. But you remember that.”

 _Of course I do,_ she thought. “Yeah. I mean, it's why you paint, right? It's how you got to be so good.” Immediately she wanted to roll her eyes at that, for sounding so ridiculous. They slipped into another silence, and she sensed him actually smiling at this, but she couldn't respond. She was edgy all over, wanting to break into a run, or stop, pull him up with a sharp hand to the elbow and make him look her in the eye until he understood. Until she understood.

Instead she asked, “What did it depend on?”

“Huh?”

“Back there. You said 'it depends'. You didn't finish.”

Now it was Peeta's turn to look as if he wanted to run. _No_ , she thought, staring at his hands, the fingers flexed so they almost brushed hers. _Not run_. She tasted her own breath, sour in her throat. She hadn't realized how close they were to touching. Their feet fell onto pavement and she looked up, seeing the familiar junction at the corners of Mayfield and River Streets. Her house was four doors down from here. She could see their letterbox, with the great dent in the side. She'd kept meaning to fix it but it was one of those things that never changed, one of those things Katniss put down to not worth changing. Maybe she thought it gave the place a bit of character, who the hell knew. It wasn't as if a dented letterbox was the one thing keeping the Everdeen house from prime real estate. 

She slowed her pace; stopping when they reached the gate and making herself look at him. He blinked at her, his teeth working against his bottom lip. As casually as she could she pulled the tied hoodie off from around her waist and clutched it into a ball. She waited.

“Well,” said Peeta. “I, um. I guess depend was too strong a word. It's more of a...hope.”

“Of what?”

As soon as the words left her mouth she wanted to swallow them up again. She knew, she saw it in his eyes, real as the ground they were standing on. She knew.

Peeta dipped his head. She could smell linseed in the cotton of his shirt. He took in a breath. “You.” His voice was barely there, fading already as he stepped back, his hands shoved as far into his jeans pockets as they could go. 

As she watched him walk away, her first reaction of wanting to lash out at him turned on its head and became one in which she felt as if she were struck frozen. And suddenly she was stepping forward, mouth open to say...she wasn't sure, something, probably nothing. It didn't matter anyway, because then she heard the door open to their house, Prim calling her name distantly from the front hall, and she felt the stiff rub of their cat, Buttercup, his body winding figures around her legs, staring up at her in his odd-cat way, with unblinking yellow eyes.

 

– 

 

She woke to the sight and scent of her sister's hair.

Katniss groaned, pulling her head back to spit out a strand that had fallen across her face. “Ugh, Prim,” she murmured, rolling away. Darkness settled briefly behind her eyelids as she buried her head into the pillow. It was darkness kept there by still clinging sleep; she didn't have to look to know there was already sunlight pouring through the curtains of her bedroom window, and whatever reprieve her body had given her, it was disappearing fast. 

A giggle drifted over from the other side of the bed. “Kat-niss...”

As smart and kind as her sister was, Prim was also one of those irritating souls who could flash from the deepest sleep into instant, bubbling cheerfulness. Especially when she knew that all Katniss wanted to do was sleep in. 

“Really? You don't have a bed of your own?” Katniss stretched a hand behind her in a vague attempt to muffle the sing-song voice, but all that happened was that Prim caught hold of it and dug her thumb into the soft flesh. It was the sort of thing they used to do to each other as kids; Katniss immediately yelped and twisted back, eyes fully open, arms flashing out and aiming for Prim's hair. 

“Ow!”

“Serves you right, you little morning freak.”

“I thought I was your little duck, for ever and ever and all of that.”

“Yeah,” said Katniss, flopping back down with a sigh. “Little duck shit.”

Prim laughed and stomped off the bed, easily dodging the pillow Katniss threw lazily at her. At the doorway she paused and raised her eyebrows. “Well, how else am I gonna find out who you dream about?” she said, pursing her lips together suggestively. She was gone before Katniss could respond, her bare feet thudding slightly on the wooden floorboards down the hall.

Katniss took a long breath and held it. She stared up at the ceiling, her thoughts circling with dizzying speed. _And say what? That I didn't just get a confession dropped on me from Peeta 'I miss home' Mellark, like I'd have any idea in hell about what I'm supposed to do now? That's no dream._ She stayed still as a rock until she felt her lungs pinch, and exhaled sharply into the empty room. It was a mighty good thing for everyone's sanity that her little sister didn't actually have the ability to read minds—though it was a point of serious debate often enough, in Katniss's reckoning, just how close Prim managed to get to the truth. Heaven forbid she happened to glean anything from last night, when Katniss had successfully avoided most if not all conversation during dinner and the hour or so following in which they'd stared drowsily at some documentary about meerkats. She still had no idea if Prim had seen her and Peeta by the letterbox. She'd quite happily keep things that way if it were at all possible. Prior, often painful experience of Prim's intuition told her plainly that wasn't going to happen, not in a thousand years.

After another minute of pointless thought Katniss hauled herself upright, pawing at the crumpled clothes in her closet before hitting on a combination of hunting boots, denim shorts and an old, sleeveless plaid shirt that didn't look entirely wasted in the half-light of morning. She stood at the mirror and plaited her hair, staring past her reflection as her fingers worked calmly and her mind fell onto other things, not all of them unrelated to what, or who, she may have actually been dreaming about. She eyed herself briefly, not caring one way or the other, and was just on her way down the hall when she heard Prim calling from the kitchen.

“We've got company!”

Katniss ducked her head as she reached the bottom of the stairs, trying to look out the window by the front door. The view was mostly blocked by Prim's ancient falling-to-pieces bicycle, but between the front basket and handlebars she could just make out the back wheel of Johanna's motorbike, propped up on the pavement outside. And then came a knocking on the door, and through it, a strong and demanding voice.

“Yo, sleepyhead, open up. I know you're there, I can see your shadow.”

Katniss yanked the door open, not bothering to hide her glare. “Jo. It's Saturday, for christsake.”

“All the more reason to get out and about. C'mon, time's a wastin'.”

Johanna held up the spare helmet. Katniss ignored it and peered past her. Apart from Mrs. Prior and her arthritic dog creeping along at a snail's pace down one side of the street, it was pretty much empty. And what was she looking for, anyway? Peeta, leaping from the bushes, this time with a surprise marriage proposal? She gnawed at the inside of her cheek. She'd seen this look on Johanna's face before, and it always meant something was up, and more than likely it was something that Katniss was not going to like.

“Look,” she said, hearing the whine in her voice and not bothering to care, “I've only just gotten up, okay? I haven't even eaten—”

“Here.” Prim appeared from nowhere and shoved a banana in Katniss's hand. “Now go.”

This brought a wide grin to Johanna's face. She had very straight teeth, and wasn't afraid of baring them, in glee or in anger or anything in between. Either way, it was not an expression to argue with. Katniss shook her head, grabbing the helmet. “Fine,” she mumbled, pulling it awkwardly over her head while Prim and Johanna exchanged knowing glances. Well, it blocked out the sound of their small victory. That was something, at least.

 

–

 

Johanna rode too fast. She always did. Katniss, who had never liked motorbikes, and would always choose her own feet over the skid and pull of this horrid thing, held on tightly and closed her eyes, ignoring the nerves that pounded through her stomach. When they reached the school and she felt the engine drop down a notch, she swallowed a groan. There were two cars in the teacher's parking lot: Haymitch's truck, parked at an angle that made her wonder if he'd arrived sideways, and a pea-green hybrid sedan. Johanna stopped and Katniss slid off. She stared at the sedan first and then at her friend until Johanna at last had the decency to look uncomfortable.

“What?” 

“I know what you're doing.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yes, really,” said Katniss, wondering if this exchange wouldn't be better served by two fourteen-year-olds sizing each other up by the lockers after gym class. “And it's not going to work.”

She was rewarded with a smirk. “I have no idea what you're talking about.” 

With that Johanna took Katniss's hand and pulled her away towards the entrance. When they reached the doors she tested them, and when they opened she murmured, “Excellent, Haymitch.” And then they were inside, walking down the wide corridors, their footsteps echoing dully. 

 

–

 

The first thing she saw when they stepped out of the back of the school and into the quadrangle was Haymitch, standing like an off-balance piece of scaffolding, and Peeta, with a pencil stuck behind one ear. They appeared to be contemplating a wall. 

“This is brilliant,” Johanna was saying as she led Katniss over. “He had this idea of painting this crappy old space for ages but couldn't figure out a concept.”

“Who, Haymitch?”

Johanna laughed. It sounded ridiculously shrill in the crisp air. “You kill me, hun, you really do. I can't wait until the day you finally figure it all out. Gimme front row seats for that.”

Katniss threw her hands in the air. Why did she even bother with Johanna? She hung back and let the round of greetings and insults pass, every part of her absolutely aligned to one resolve: ignoring Peeta. She even made a show of peeling her now slightly squashed banana and eating it while pretending to be fascinated by the pile of sticks that was stuck in the drinking fountain. And the plan worked perfectly. For approximately eleven seconds, that is, before she felt a presence by her shoulder, turned, and found his eyes upon hers, and a smile, so slight she wasn't sure if it was even there, tugging at the corners of his lips. 

He had two brushes in one hand, and was holding one out to her.

“Trade?”

She stared at him blankly. Peeta gave a shrug and nodded at the banana peel. “One awkward prop for another?” he said, eyebrow raised.

“Oh my god.” Katniss snatched the brush and tossed the fruit into a trashcan. “You're an idiot,” she murmured.

He looked badly like he wanted to laugh, but she could see in his expression that it was as reactionary as her anger. If she had been paying more attention she might have noticed the off-note in his voice, the way he stood to one side and let her dictate proceedings. Well, maybe she had noticed. There was not a lot she could do about it. Her bad mood was just going to get in the way of everything else, so why even try to stop it? She caught a glance at her watch, saw how early it still was, and sighed. Were they really going to be like this and not say anything for the next eight hours? 

A peal of laughter rang out across the quad. She saw Johanna watching them and wondered briefly what would happen if she were to turn on one heel, push Peeta back against the fountain and kiss the careful smile off his lips. Whether she would taste his indecision or his relief, feel the fluttering nerves still pooled in her stomach rise quick and fast into her throat, so he might know like she did, so he might realize what one little word had done to her.

Except it wasn't just that. It was knowing that maybe, it was more than just a two year absence, that they'd each been on the other's periphery for a hell of a lot longer. She'd never seen him with a girl who was anything more than a friend, and he'd been surrounded by girls all through their junior years at school. She'd never herself dated. Dreams she might have had aside, ignoring whatever curiosity it was that made her superimpose his face and his body next to hers in the dark, did she actually know for sure if she even liked him? And if she couldn't be his friend, and the thought of anything else scared her too much, then what was the point? 

Katniss gave herself exactly ten seconds to answer this. Heat flew to her face, but nothing else. Nothing. “I'm sorry,” she said, holding out the paintbrush. When Peeta didn't take it she tried to push it towards him, and when he still didn't move she grabbed his fingers and prised them apart with her own. Their hands fumbled and the brushes dropped to the ground. She felt his palm slide against hers. Words tumbled from her mouth. “I...I can't do this. I'm sorry.” 

Ignoring Johanna's voice and Haymitch's soft growl, she moved quickly back over the quad and through the school, breaking into a jog when her feet touched the corridors, not stopping until she hit the front doors and was out of the parking lot proper. Like yesterday, but now she was the one turning away. 

She thought she could hear footsteps following her. She was sure she knew who they belonged to. And maybe she slowed a little so he could still see her, could keep track of the path she was taking. But not once did she look back.

 

– 

 

When Katniss was small, she had in a box beneath her bed a collection of treasures given to her by her father. He had been a construction worker, and many days after jobs spent out on the roads with heavy grading equipment he would come home with a pocketful of objects picked up by the side of the highway. Things folks would toss out of their window as they sped by, or abandoned by wandering hitchhikers, or sometimes things dropped by birds, or things worn clean by being pulled through the grass by the hooves of cattle that grazed too near the fences. She gave each a story, unhampered by the fact that she knew so little beyond her country life. A plastic dinosaur with an arm broken off: there had been a battle somewhere and he was the only survivor. A bead of broken glass, emerald green and smooth as a pebble: she imagined a wave had washed it to the field, a wave so enormous that it only rose up every hundred thousand years, big enough to cross the whole country from the ocean to their little town. 

Prim wasn't part of this game, and because she was too young to understand, when she found out she threatened to tell their mother. Katniss reacted like a spooked animal, taking her box and running away with it as far from the house as she could go. She ran until the weight of it made her unsteady, and when she tripped she did more than scratch her knee or elbow—she broke her arm in three places. 

They found her by the riverbank. Prim caught the box before it was washed away, but the contents were scattered and lost from sight. Their mother, when she learned of the petty jealousy, confiscated the relic and yelled at her husband for neglecting his work. It was a rare fight between them, but in the end it didn't matter. The next month Mr. Everdeen lost his job; another month after that he was hit by a semi-trailer driving home one night and was killed instantly.

She was still wearing a cast when their mother took to her bed, the first of many times to come when Mrs. Everdeen would not get up even for the murmurings of her two girls. At school Katniss refused to leave Prim's side, standing mute while her classmates surrounded her in the hallway. She let them sign the plaster, only because she had no way of telling them not to. She even saved a space for Haymitch, but he shook his head and made her return to class. She let the Mellark boy scribble on it instead. This was not like her at all. They lived at opposite ends of the town and barely knew each other, but he took the pen she held out to him and on the side of her wrist he wrote _K_ , like a secret. It shattered when they broke the cast, of course, along with all the drawings and love hearts and the dumb, smiley faces. And when the longing for her father began to settle and allow her to think of other things, she thought often of that letter, and she wondered. 

 

– 

 

Katniss followed the water. 

Her boots sunk into the soft ground, and as she lifted her arms by her sides for balance, a thin thread of panic coursed through her as if on a loop. But it wasn't until she started listening to it that she slowed to a halt, pressing her arms against her ribs and blinking her eyes closed until she could trick herself into calming down. It didn't mean she was actually calm, far from it. She was deeply frustrated with her see-sawing reaction to everything, today, yesterday...everything. She wasn't a kid any more. This, this felt like something she should have gone through at Prim's age, and then it would be done. Whatever it was. Whatever—

“Katniss.”

“I don't understand,” she said, turning on him and speaking in the same breath as if they were still back in the quad, and certainly not bothering to be surprised that he'd followed. Who was she kidding—she might as well have taken his hand and pulled him along with her. “You barely know me. You barely _know_ me, Peeta, and I'm supposed to be the thing that hinges on whether you come back to this nothing town? That's real shitty to dump on someone.”

If she was trying to get a reaction it didn't take. Well, maybe not. At least he had the grace to look embarrassed. Or nervous. He'd always been careful and mostly serious, more than sweet a lot of the time...

And there she was again, laying his personality out like a recital learned by heart. It was something to accuse him of not knowing her, if she couldn't at least build her argument at the most basic level. Katniss blew at the hair that was falling over her face and bit her lip down hard. She looked away and coughed. “I just don't understand, okay.”

After a beat she sensed him stepping closer, felt his fingers brush her bare arm. There was that scent again, linseed oil and dust and plain soap clean on his skin. It made her head swim.

“Well. That makes two of us.”

She almost smiled at that, she didn't know why. She searched for the first instinct her body was holding out to give and that was to turn back to him, which she did, not caring how close he stood. Her frustration had cooled, replaced by something else. “Will you throw stones with me?” she asked, her voice low.

“What?”

“Over there.” Katniss pointed. “You remember, first one to hit the tire swing straight though. Five goes each, no more.”

He stared at her for a long moment. “Okay.”

Katniss reached down to retrieve a stone from the riverbank, but when she moved to stand up again he touched his hand to her hip, stilling her. “Wait,” he said. She looked up at him, her body bent slightly. He let her straighten and held his words until their eyes were level. “I want to say something.” 

A flutter of worry parted her lips, but it was unnoticeable, and she was too distracted by his hand to actually make a sound. She nodded anyway, because he looked like he was waiting for something. Maybe he was expecting her to run again.

“This is probably going to sound all wrong, but...I'm glad we weren't friends, Katniss. I'm glad the most you ever got from me was that dumb letter on your cast. It makes this a hell of a lot harder to do, but honestly, I think if it was easy I'd wonder if there was a catch. I don't want to wonder about you, see. I want to know you. And I won't lie, I think you're mad and beautiful and maybe I want to toss you into that river and see if the mud sticks, 'cause I'm pretty sure you're that strong that nothing could—”

“Peeta...”

“No, just—let me finish making an idiot of myself, okay?” A laugh left him then, the sort of he obviously had no control over. So she waited, and she stared instead at the point where his collar dipped and beneath it where the skin was flushed pink from the sun, damp and shining. He watched her do this. His hand left her side and he lifted both to her face, and barely touching her he said, again, quietly, “I want to know you.” His mouth caught hers and moved over her. “Katniss, I...” 

She kissed him back.

She kissed him deeply and suddenly, reacting before anything else could, holding the taste of him on her tongue and letting it fill her completely. The sound of her name, like that, _like that_...it was as if everything was suddenly caving in and it was all she could do to swallow it whole. 

They broke free to breathe. She cradled his head. 

“Then you can,” she said.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

He smirked a little. “That was...I suppose that was a weird way to start. Getting to know each other, I mean.”

“Pretty much the worst.”

“Mmm.” She pressed her lips to him again, slowly, testing. She felt the words rumble gently at his throat and through her hands. “Definitely the worst.”

They remained there for a minute or so, then another and another, until she gave up and stopped counting. When his forehead came to rest against hers she slipped free as if remembering, picked up a rock and held it out. She glanced across the water to where the old tire swung. The expression on his face was filled with anticipation, part of it drawn of something she couldn't place, and it made her feel as if a weight was lifting inside her. Katniss looked him up and down, and with a grin she said, “Make that hit in one, I might just let you try again.” 

 

– 

 

Time passed, the days turning shorter, the seasons passing over. Katniss repaired a ladder that had been hidden away for the last year or so in the garage, and spent two days fixing the gutters on their roof. She gave herself mild sunstroke but it was worth every penny they would save in repairs. When Peeta offered to help she said thank you and told him no. This became a common theme between the two of them, but she repeated her words in various times and places until she was sure that he understood her. He was a quick learner. It should not have surprised her that he was becoming very, very good at meeting whatever strange, hidden away expectations she might have kept of him; she made a mental note to test him more often. 

It was all very much of a distraction, really. She imagined if her father were still there, he might have told her the good ones always are.

 

– 

 

“Again, just for the record,” said Peeta, huffing slightly as he trailed behind, the groaning sides of the box he was carrying threatening to split open at every step, “you want to tell me why Johanna needs fifty pounds of old recipe books?”

“Coming from an artist, that's kind of a dumb question.”

“I'm pretty sure I surrendered my art credentials when you made me pack mule, Katniss.”

She pushed open the door with a grin, holding it just long enough for him to crash through, and turned to examine the shop. Empty again. 

“Hey, Jo!” she yelled. “I'm just going to help myself to the till!”

There was a pause, and then heavy boots thudded down the stairs, depositing Johanna at the bottom. When her eyes landed on Katniss she swore beneath her breath. “Oh, it's only you.”

“Yep, I'm here to do a surprise audit.”

Johanna ignored her, having just then spied Peeta and the box. “Well, shit, is that goodies I see?” She guided him towards the nearest chair and sat him down. “Don't worry, I'm not gonna ink your pretty skin,” she said as she put the box aside and eyed him carefully. “Though you'd look damn good with something right about here...all the way down to...well, I'll leave that to your imagination.” With a purple nail she touched the back of Peeta's neck, trailing it down an inch or three, and gave him a sly look in the mirror. 

He cocked an eyebrow. “And how do you know I don't have one already?” 

“Okay, honey, you have me there.” She turned, not missing a beat. “I'll just let Katniss fill me in later, right?”

Katniss began to cough. “Or maybe not,” said Johanna, with a shrug. Peeta smiled graciously and swung out of the chair. He patted Katniss gently on the back.

“Thanks,” she murmured.

“Any time.”

They looked at each other, eyes at a level and bright with understanding; and this, finally, was too much for Johanna, whose moment of brief flirtation vanished with a grunt. “Ugh. Hold me while I puke.” She aimed Katniss towards the door, pushing Peeta along with her. “Would you please take your ridiculous boyfriend out of my studio before he actually starts lighting up the place?” 

The intent was there, but they didn't get far. One step out and he grinned quickly and turned so their lips met, half in smile as if it was done by accident. Katniss heard a voice growling at them from inside but she ignored it, pressing back, boldness enlivening her until she was aware of no other sensation but his mouth and his hands, his breath pushing through her.

“God damn it, how's about you two kids quit canoodling in open doorways, and leave a poor drunk to stagger home in peace.” 

This, at last, had them breaking apart. Katniss felt her face flush and ducked her head; half-watching as Peeta did the same, a tweak of his lips threatening to break into something more each time their eyes met. They remained as they were standing, scuffed, sneakered feet touching toe to toe, neither game to speak. Finally Haymitch sighed and made an exaggerated show of stepping around them. “Yeah, well. Don't go thinking I'm shocked, sweetheart,” he muttered, shooting her a heavy look. “'Cause I'm really not.”

Peeta looked confused. He spoke in a low voice to Katniss. “Why does it feel like we've just been shot at with both barrels, one after the other?”

But she didn't reply. She was watching Haymitch, his eyes, crinkled at the edges, the pale, washed-out color almost startlingly clear behind the familiar sheen of drink and fatigue. Katniss hid a smile then, hid it away from Peeta, turning her face just enough so that only her old mentor could see, and he wasted no time in offering her his best scowl in response. She recognized a small part of herself in that downturned expression. She felt for Peeta's hand, curling her fingers tight. 

“There's always a first,” she said, to which Haymitch gave a final mutterring and sloped away, shaking his head as if the whole world was conspiring in its own small way against him. And so normalcy was returned to quiet Panem, with twin bursts of laughter following him on his wavering walk down the street.


End file.
